Facts vs. Lived Experiences: How Different Approaches of Journalism Coexist in our Modern Society
As misinformation and the use of AI-generated content increases worldwide, two winners of the 2025 One Young World Journalist of the Year Award, Nilesh Christopher and Leandro Amaya Camacho, discuss how they source and verify information to deliver fact-based news.
Speakers
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Mónica de GreiffFormer Minister of Justice and Law, Republic of ColombiaMónica de Greiff
Counsellor
Former Minister of Justice and Law, Republic of Colombia
Mónica de Greiff holds a Law degree, with a specialisation in Administrative Law and a PhD in Jurisprudence, all from Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. She has held numerous senior positions in both the public and private sectors. In government, she was appointed Ambassador to Kenya and Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Environment and Habitat. She also served as Minister of Justice of Colombia, Vice Minister of Justice, Presidential Adviser for International Affairs, and Secretary General at the Ministry of Mines and Energy. In addition, she represented the President of the Republic before the National Television Commission and was District Secretary of Economic Development of Bogotá. In the corporate sector, she was CEO of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce and the Bogotá Energy Group, as well as Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs at Shell Colombia Inc. She has also served on the boards of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, Promigas S.A., Corporación de Ferias y Exposiciones S.A., Grupo Keralty S.A.S., and Gran Colombia Gold. Currently, she is a member of the Boards of Directors of Lagos de Aurea S.A.S., the Aris Mining Corporation in Toronto, Canada, and One Young World in London. Given her extensive professional trajectory, she has expertise in: i) the energy industry; ii) administration, senior management, and leadership; iii) government affairs and public policy; iv) business risk management; v) human resources and talent development; vi) legal affairs and corporate governance; vii) health, safety, and environment; viii) sustainability; ix) climate change; and x) business strategy and project management.
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Nilesh ChristopherJournalistNilesh Christopher
Journalist
Nilesh Christopher is a journalist reporting on the societal impacts of technology and AI— how it empowers, harms, and reshapes communities. Since 2020, he has consistently led the way in writing about AI’s misuse by the powerful: from exposing the first-ever use of deepfakes in an Indian election to investigating a high-profile politician who dismissed incriminating audio as a deepfake. When local institutions declined to assist, he partnered with forensic experts in the U.S. to investigate the clip, revealing a growing phenomenon called the “liar’s dividend.” His reporting drew international attention to this tactic, cited in U.S. Senate testimony and policy discussions on AI transparency, and spotlighted the need for AI detection tools to be made accessible to under-resourced newsrooms in the Global South. In 2024, Nilesh's election coverage revealed how Indian political parties used synthetic voices and AI avatars for voter outreach— not just to deceive, but to reinforce beliefs. Besides politics, his reporting has also informed readers about AI’s impact on labor, revealed biases in AI image generators, and featured in exhibitions to raise public awareness. In 2019, his exposé on TikTok's role in amplifying caste-based violence in India led the platform to change their community guidelines. Nilesh is a 2025 Nieman Fellow at Harvard. His stories have been published in WIRED, The Atlantic, the BBC, and Rest of World. His body of work has earned him numerous honors, including SOPA, SAJA, SABEW, and India’s highest journalism honor, the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism.
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Leandro Amaya CamachoJournalist and EditorLeandro Amaya Camacho
Journalist and Editor
Leandro Amaya Camacho is a Peruvian journalist, descendant of the pre-Columbian Sechura culture. He specializes in the Amazon, Indigenous rights, the environment, oceans and tracing illegal economies. His work is known for a systemic and human-centered approach that seeks to understand territories from within in order to tell powerful and transformative stories. His reporting has had a direct impact on the communities portrayed: several Indigenous leaders featured in his stories gained national visibility and were granted protection by the Peruvian state. His accolades include the 2020 Young Journalist Award (Thomson Foundation and the Foreign Press Association, London) for two high-impact investigations: one uncovering irregular government negotiations for offshore oil drilling in northern Peru, and another exposing the contamination of children with heavy metals in Cerro de Pasco. In 2024, he received the Inter American Press Association’s (SIP) Excellence in Journalism Award (Environment category) for his coverage of Indigenous rights and environmental defenders in the Peruvian Amazon, and was a finalist for the IPYS National Grand Prize for Journalism for his reporting on the murders of environmental defenders in Peru — among other national distinctions. Beyond his investigative work, he has mentored young journalists in workshops on investigative and environmental journalism, and has promoted community journalism networks in the Amazon and northern coast. He has spoken at conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, Lima, and other cities, sharing insights on traceability, criminal structures, and the role of independent journalism in defending democracy and protecting territories.